I spent my lunch hour today walking in the rain to the Middle East to get tickets for tonight’s Keren Ann show (thanks to Sasha Frere-Jones‘s piece in The New Yorker a few months ago) and for the upcoming M. Ward show in April. I love the fact that I can walk into the Middle East, past the bar, up the stairs plastered with old posters and signs memorializing Mark Sandman, and buy tickets at face value. They sell tickets for their shows through TicketMaster (funny, googling “Ticketbastard” brings up the TicketMaster page for Gang of Four. Devious), but you can buy them from 1-7pm every day on the premises. Same goes with The Paradise, where I picked up tickets for Josh Rouse, Kathleen Edwards, and Graham Coxon over the next few weeks. I swear for awhile there, the Paradise was charging a fee for the in-person purchase, but if they were, they’re not anymore. I’m glad both of these venues continue to keep alive the tradition/courtesy of allowing you to actually pay what the tickets cost.